Fedora's way forward

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/28/06, Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com> wrote:
> I'd be willing.  But this really needs to be done by a lawyer.

Yes indeed it does which makes the fact that you have brought this
up.. on  a list dedicated to discussing technical issues particularly
bemusing. So are you comments about it seeming to be reasonable path
for RedHat contrary to the current policy stance RedHat has taken.
How exactly do we as laypeople even begin to discuss with you the
feasibility of this idea ... if you don't even know what the terms of
the license being offered are?  While a lawyer's review will be needed
before a serious effort at implementation can be done. Certaintly
knowing with specificity the exact language of the offered terms from
the patent holder can only help produce informed discussion. I fully
expect there to be conditions which will broadly be understood as
problematic to solve some of the issues you have with how things are
done now.

If you think there is a shred of hope for community members to have an
option to buy in towards a "pay up" for an open source project that is
actually worth buying into.. please be so kind as to do the necessary
inquiries with the patent holder about the available license terms and
conditions before making that suggestion public. Right now you are
taking about a 3 million mile view on the issue.. and everything that
matters in this discussion are details in the licensing terms, which
you don't know. Please refrain from speculation until you are in a
position to at least state clearly what the offered terms and
conditions are. We can't even have a well intentioned layperson
discussion as to what is or is not allowed without specific terms.

However I think its a waste of everyones valuable time to discuss the
pros and cons of implementation details like "pointing yum to a 3rd
party location by default" until you can present us with the terms of
the licensing that is being offered and there is informed opinion
about what is allow,what is not allow, and what is uncertaintly
allowed by the language of the terms that you are suggesting the
community spend resources in securing.

-jef